I think you may be doing yourself a disservice if you haven’t read the Substack comments in this case; not because the arguments are good, exactly, but because of what they imply about the kind of equivocation that takes place in our society, and the reasons for it.
Summarizing the comment dynamic which I personally found illuminating: A number of Republican-oriented commenters arguing Republicans are already doing this, have already being doing this for years; a number of Republican-oriented commenters arguing this is antithetical to all of their beliefs and Scott Alexander only suggests this because he doesn’t understand Republicans at all; Democrat-oriented commenters saying that they’d be a lot more receptive to Republicans if they did this, and other Democrat-oriented commenters saying that this would undermine any credibility the Republicans have left.
I think you may be doing yourself a disservice if you haven’t read the Substack comments in this case; not because the arguments are good, exactly, but because of what they imply about the kind of equivocation that takes place in our society, and the reasons for it.
Summarizing the comment dynamic which I personally found illuminating: A number of Republican-oriented commenters arguing Republicans are already doing this, have already being doing this for years; a number of Republican-oriented commenters arguing this is antithetical to all of their beliefs and Scott Alexander only suggests this because he doesn’t understand Republicans at all; Democrat-oriented commenters saying that they’d be a lot more receptive to Republicans if they did this, and other Democrat-oriented commenters saying that this would undermine any credibility the Republicans have left.
Those comments sound like an argument for moving to a system that doesn’t have to have only two parties.